It may seem like superhero movies are impossibly huge, but that doesn’t mean everybody likes them. Some film aficionados miss the days of real cinema, when it was all about getting paid millions of dollars to make art instead of getting paid millions of dollars to make something that the commoners like. One such true film fan is Ethan Hawke, who recently said in an interview with The Film Stage (via Vulture) that there can be good superhero movies, but at the end of the day, they’re still just superhero movies.
“Now we have the problem that they tell us Logan is a great movie,” Hawke says, adding, “Well, it’s a great superhero movie. It still involves people in tights with metal coming out of their hands.” (We’ll ignore the fact that none of the X-Men in the movies ever really wore tights, especially not in Logan.) “It’s not Bresson. It’s not Bergman,” Hawke continues, “But they talk about it like it is.” He says Logan was a “fine superhero movie,” but in the end “big business” doesn’t see the difference between a fine movie and a fine superhero movie.
In Hawke’s defense, it is his job to make movies, so it’s in his best interest to make sure that people consider making movies to be a legitimate career. Otherwise, his life will be like that dinner scene in Whiplash where nobody is sufficiently impressed by Miles Teller’s drumming skills.
“Oh Ethan, you still making movies? Don’t they all have superheroes in them?”
“No, frustrating uncle character from Whiplash, some movies are actually really smart and cool.”
Then he storms off because nobody gets it.